Dhaka: Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus today urged Meta, which operates several social media and communication platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp, to find an effective way to combat disinformation that disrupts social harmony and spreads hatred. “This (disinformation) is a big problem. You must find a way to fight it,” he said.
According to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the Chief Adviser made the urge when Simon Milner, VP, Public Policy, APAC at Meta, and Ruzan Sarwar, Public Policy Manager, met him at the State Guest House Jamuna. “Bangladesh is a densely populated country. One wrong word can destabilise the whole country. Some people do it deliberately,” said the Chief Adviser.
Milner stated that they were ready to engage with the Interim Government of Bangladesh to counter disinformation, especially ahead of the upcoming general election next year, and had had meetings with different Bangladeshi authorities and rights groups in recent days. “We have had a dedicated team for Bangladesh for the past five years,” he said.
The Chief Adviser acknowledged that Meta platforms, especially Facebook, have the potential to promote business growth but warned that they could be dangerous if ethical standards are not maintained. Chief Adviser’s Special Assistant on Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, was among others present and urged Meta to increase its Bangla language proficiency since Meta LLM AI relies heavily on English, which is not helpful for local users.
On Tuesday, Meta officials held a meeting with ICT ministry officials where the Bangladesh side, referring to recent research, urged Meta to increase investment in Bengali LLM and AI-based sentiment analysis in Bengali. They also called for an increase in the number of human reviewers to tackle fake news and information.
The ICT Division has requested Meta to strengthen the enforcement of its community standards in the context of Bangladesh by recruiting more Bangladeshi content reviewers who possess a deeper understanding of local language, culture, and sensitivities. Additionally, they have requested Meta to deploy cache servers and edge routers within the country to improve service efficiency, optimise bandwidth, and protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Representatives of Bangladesh Police and BTRC, present at Tuesday’s meeting, asked Meta to improve the processing time for taking down harmful posts to protect citizen safety. The police also sought Meta’s cooperation in a proactive and faster response in threat detection, crime detection, misinformation/disinformation alert, inciting mob violence alert, and suicide alert.